Jail had time to prevent fatal inmate beating

If you were to read this column from end to end, then read it again, and continue rereading it until you have read it five times, you would understand how long it took to beat Robert Cotton to death.

Cotton was an inmate at Maricopa County's state-of-the-art maximum-security jail when he was murdered May 1. Much of the assault was caught on a surveillance tape. The beating goes on for 15 minutes.

Last week, officials in charge of the jail said that they found "no reason for a change" in jail policies based on the incident.

The county's chief of detention told The Republic, "After reviewing this incident, we are confident this homicide could not have been prevented. It was never in full view of the officer."

It's easy for us to understand the impossibility of trying to stop a violent inmate who makes a quick move to strike another.

But this was not that kind of attack. You could drive from downtown Phoenix to Metro Center in the time it is suspected to have taken Pete Van Winkle to kill fellow inmate Robert Cotton.

How could procedures that allow such a thing to happen be acceptable?

In the video, Van Winkle drags a bleeding, unconscious Cotton from his cell on to the upper-level concourse of the cell block, kicks at the body and half-heartedly tries to hoist it over a railing before surrendering to officers.

The sheriff's department produced a 500-page incident report on the case. In it, the guard posted near the video monitors at the time of the murder is said to have placed a phone call about training, in addition to other duties. All of which, supposedly, is according to procedure.

In the meantime, an inmate strangled and mauled another inmate for as long as it takes to play a quarter in a professional football game.

The family of Cotton, who was in jail on auto-theft charges, has filed a $2 million claim against the sheriff's office. That lawsuit will be sorted out in civil court.

In a much less civil court - the one involving public opinion - the verdict on what happened in the jail has been mixed.

News reports on the video of the murder first appeared on KPHO (Channel 5) news. When TheRepublic didn't have an article about it the next day a reader called and asked me, "Are you afraid that (printing an article about the murder) would hurt (Sheriff Joe Arpaio's) chances of re-election? Or would it help them?"

I raised the question in an Internet blog on azcentral.com.

"Sheriff Joe could stand on the corner of Central and Camelback and beat baby seals and puppies to death . . . and it wouldn't matter to his loyal followers," one reader responded. "Busting an illegal busboy with a cracked taillight makes anything else irrelevant."

We're a tough crowd in Arizona. I've learned over the years that a death in jail elicits many, many responses like this: "Who cares, trash killing trash is something most people could give 2 (expletive) about."

To which another reader said, "Sorry, but Cotton wasn't sentenced to death."

While another added, "Murder, no matter where it happens, is unacceptable. However, it's more tolerated in a prison environment because prisoners-killing-prisoners is preferable to ex-cons-killing-civilians, so to speak."

In the end, the way we feel about all this could be summed up by quotations that were forwarded to me by two separate readers:

1. "Violence is justified in the service of mankind." - Attila the Hun.

2. "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Fyodor Dostoevsky.